Music Education

Why should you study Music Education at Trinity Laban?

• Develop your teaching through practical, placement, and research-based learning – extend your understanding and skills into new areas of research and practice.
• Prepare for today’s music education profession – be part of a dynamic community of practitioners engaged in an exciting and constantly changing professional world.
• Undertake a professional placement – placement-based learning will help you to develop into the professional you want to be and give you access to different music education contexts.
• Study in London – as a Trinity Laban student, you can take advantage of London and all the opportunities it has to offer.
• Learn with inspiration and world-class teaching staff – between them, they have worked with organisations such as UCL Institute of Education, Sage Gateshead, The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, The Royal College of Music, Hong Kong Academy of the Performing Arts, and NAFA Singapore.
• Get access to 1-1 instrumental and vocal lessons with Trinity Laban teaching staff.
• Discover a hugely varied and exciting suite of postgraduate courses – with a mix of online and in-person courses, with and without performance options, there is a course that is right for you.
• Connect with our fantastic Learning and Participation team – you will have the opportunity to work closely with our Learning & Participation team, who make a huge contribution to the cultural life of South East London.

Music Education staff are highly experienced practitioners, teachers, community musicians, composers, performers, and researchers from across the globe. Some of our instrumental, vocal, and composition teachers also teach practical pedagogy and can offer mentoring for Music Education students.

We regularly invite guest speakers – leading specialists in specific areas – to engage with our students. Recent visitors have included renowned writers Anna Bull, Kathryn Deane, John Finney, Gawain Hewitt, Phil Mullen, Chris Philpott and Mary Stakelum.

Learning in the department rarely involves conventional lectures, but includes discussion, questioning, practical examples, and student-led work. Most courses have music-making embedded in each module. All teaching places the importance of creativity and an emphasis on intuitive musicality as its starting point.

Most courses offer placements, enabling students to gain practical teaching or music leading experience. Placement hosts can include local schools and music hubs, as well as high profile arts organisations such as LSO Discovery and Glyndebourne Education. Students may also be able to work within Trinity Laban’s own renowned Learning & Participation department.

All courses permit specialisation into particular areas of interest:  past students have focused on topics such as music with patients with dementia and composing operas with children.

We regard collaborative skills as key to best practice in music education. We believe that the best music leadership is undertaken “with” rather than “to” others, and that it is vital to understand how to work alongside learners in a variety of settings. A core element of this is often the collaborative creation of improvisation and composition activities.

All students are expected to take part in CoLab each year. This ground-breaking two-week festival of student-led collaborative work across music and dance invites students to propose and lead their own process-based projects.